


ME: an introduction to Ashlings_BlackSwan

by Ashlings_BlackSwan



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Author Commentary, Autobiography, Childhood Memories, Death, Diary/Journal, Memories, Other, Real Life, Slice of Life, Stream of Consciousness, train of thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28030305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashlings_BlackSwan/pseuds/Ashlings_BlackSwan
Summary: This is a little introductory piece on me, Ashling. It has nothing to do with my fanfictions but I want to put it out here anyway. The reason why is, well, this is kind of therapeutic honestly.To anyone who'll read this: my pen name is Ashling, I'm from Italy and I'm currently (2020) a university student majoring in Mandarin Chinese. Everything else you want or need to know about me is here.Enjoy!
Kudos: 2





	ME: an introduction to Ashlings_BlackSwan

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse my typos and grammatical errors: English isn't my first language and I'm studying Chinese at uni, which just further messes up with my language ability sometimes!

I have this weird memory.  
I was sitting on the toilet, in the bathroom with the yellow tiles in my house. I was around 13 or14. And I was inexplicably sad. But it wasn't that cold sadness that makes you want to crawl under a blanket and cry. It was the void one, that makes you stand still for a long time, until the world feels like it has stopped and you're not sure you're alive, you're not sure anything is real anymore.

That was what I was going through. A teenager being overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe, contemplating how useless, meaningless, tiny and yet complex we are, in this solar system, in this world.

It wasn't scary. I wasn't scared of the idea of having no point in existing. I just, acknowledged that. It became a part of me and stayed in the back of my mind for years. I would feel empty very often, after middle school. I remember the hour-long bus ride to school was meant to numb myself down, trying to suppress the waterfall of nihilism and sadness that came out when I looked at the sun rise, outside of the window of that dirty, old bus. I used to listen to epic music back then, for the whole hour ride, and there was this beautiful video clip of a mad man chasing a butterfly, the first time I saw it I teared up. Because it felt like that, a lonely mad man chasing the ephemeral beauty of something tiny, was a metaphor for humanity.  
My teenage years were like that, riddled with texts from suicidal friends at 3 in the morning, panic attacks and a whole lot of willingness to run the fuck away from there. To travel as an escape.

My childhood hadn't been particularly bad, I was just one of those bright kids who started getting praised by teachers and mocked by their classmates. Then I had eye surgery, got to wear glasses, couldn't do many things anymore because of my eyes. I started feeling ugly, as if my eyes were horrible.  
I know for a fact that people look at others' eyes first. It's an assessment, to see if they're worth your time, if they're beautiful, how they're feeling now. But my eyes were flawed, hidden behind thick lenses, not obeying my brain, and they were scarred. I do have two half-moon shaped scars in the white of my eyes. I've always been scared people could see them.

My life hit a very low point at the beginning of high school, that high school I had chosen to once again run away from the people I had spent my childhood with. I had no friends for a long time. I stopped caring about what I looked like. I felt like I couldn't accomplish anything anymore, the once gifted kid now just a lazy teen who had never had to learn how to study, thrown in a classroom full of geniuses.  
I remember crying in class. Many times. Hot tears pooling in my eyes, blurring my vision, and I was so angry, so angry that I couldn't control them, I couldn't control myself, I couldn't be happy and have friends and just be okay like everybody else.

I eventually made friends with people who felt as broken and outcast as me. Especially one of them, the suicidal friend, made me realize that life was important, that it had a meaning, only until it was animating someone I cared about. I tried my best with her. She's doing much better now, a happy lesbian studying all she ever dreamt of. But the nights I spent trying to dissuade her from taking her life... I don't think I'll ever forget them.

She is the one who introduced me to the idea of not being straight. I'm still not sure of my sexuality, but I know for a fact that that afternoon we rode in two on a tiny, squeaky bike around her city, when she said she liked girls, I thought that could be the case for me too. I may have had a crush on her, a thousand years ago, but I don't know, I've never tried thinking hard on it enough to see if it was real or not.

Reality, what a stupid concept. I stopped believing in it when my grandfather died. When my mum kept telling me he loved me, he was a good man, a good father. There was nothing real about that statement, for me. I had no happy memory about him, just flashes of his angry face when I had tried to stop him from smoking another packet of cigarettes by cutting one in half. I just didn't want his to die of lung cancer. And how rude, how angry and scary and evil he looked when he mistreated my grandmother and talked angrily to my mum. I remember feeling nothing at all, when he died. That morning my mum got the phone call and she crashed on my and my sister's bed, crying, shortly followed by dad. I was the only one who couldn't cry. It was a fake feeling, and I didn't want to remember that moment as one of fake sadness. So I just hugged my crying little sister tight, trying not to think why I couldn't feel sad for him, just for my mum and my grandmother.

My life has been a train wreck. Now I'm not sure if I'm at my lowest once again, but I'm not at my peak either. 2020 has had a huge toll on me, my anxiety, my well-being. And I'm tired. I'm lonely. I crave human touch. But I want to live. Despite the meaninglessness of this whole universe, I want to go on. I don't know where I'll go, where life will take me, but I want to keep going. Because dying is not an option anymore.

I want to feel alive.  
I finally want to live.  
I really do.


End file.
